Skip to content

Tag: Jiddu Krishnamurti

A Wick, Awake, Awoke, A Wake

Published on April 7, 2025

Does a candle concern itself with how much of its body and substance remains as it burns? Is the wick bothered with its lifespan, ever shortening as it turns to ash, smoke, and light?

Are we really that much different? Aleister Crowley among many other things, some much more cohesive and comprehensible than others, once said that if you love life, you mustn’t waste time – as that was the only true measure we had for it. But is that true? Our bodies certainly keep track of time we spend asleep and often use that aggregate sum against us. But do we actually have a way of counting the hours and minutes we spend not sleeping through this life? And further, when we break down the hours we spend with eyes open, do we have meaningful subtotals for the time we consciously are paying attention to the details of what is happening around us?

Are we in fact “woke” whenever we are awake? Merriam-Webster defines “awake” simply as “not being asleep.” But we slip into other territory when we consider that it also suggests as synonyms being “alive, aware, cognizant, conscious, and sensible.” These words per MW mean “having knowledge of something,” but awake implies that one has become alive to something, right? And if you’re alive to the injustice happening around you, to social prejudices and inequities, to wrongs committed in the name of right and might that should otherwise be left to history’s sad chapters of hiccups or roadblocks to evolution, then what exactly is the opposite? To be “dead”? In a way, yes. Or if not dead, then at least very, very dull and lifeless, unable to be aroused from the slumber of convenience, custom, or culture.

Krishnamurti suggested that if one is stupid, it is meaningless to run around thinking or saying, “I’m going to become smart, I’m going to gain wisdom.” That is tantamount to repeatedly running your head into a brick wall. It’s impossible, according to the Dunning-Kruger effect, to recognize that you are not intelligent or knowledgeable about a subject without knowing something about the subject in the first place. In other words, you may know that you are dumb, but exactly how dumb, and about what? You have no basis for knowing.

The only way, Krishnamurti suggests, is not by working harder or studying more diligently or even drilling yourself with subject matter – unless you start with the right subject. And that’s the tricky part, right? To become smart, you need to examine the areas and ways in which you are stupid. To truly understand your limitations, Dirty Harry-style. Until you know, really Know, how and why you think the way you do, it’s impossible to even consider the possibility of changing that. You can walk around with your eyes open, but unless you understand what you’re looking at, and why it draws your attention, you’re not really awake, are you?

For that reason, being mindful of what’s going on around is usually of limited value. You’re not awake, you’re attending a wake, reading a Kaddish for someone you don’t even really know, observing that you are observing without really knowing what you’re looking at.

There are a lot of self-help “gurus” out there giving advice on the best place to start this “journey to awakening.” Let’s be honest. Most of their suggestions are always a little obtuse. They suggest that lighting your inner candle is like switching on a lightbulb by flipping a switch. The wiring that supports such an activity is hidden in the walls, in the same way a candle’s wick is concealed within a pillar of wax. You can get yourself out of the dark with a flick of a finger or the striking of a match, but you’re only opening your eyes. You still need to get out of bed and walk to the library that is life all around you. You have to actually connect – and by doing so, let go of the idea of self and recognize that anything you know is possibly by being known, anything that can happen does happen, and everything that is, is really part of a much larger nothing.

I read this morning a quote, “Don’t judge someone because they sin differently than you.” Never mind that some “sins” are considered much worse than others. Pedophilia is more wicked than simply cheating on your mate, right? Murder is higher on the heinous scale than letting your dog do their business on your neighbor’s lawn. Right? Never mind that the first step in even considering this proposition at all is becoming aware of, recognizing, measuring, and taking full responsibility for, your own sins – however you define that word (and we all apply varying definitions and names for it). That’s what being truly “woke” is actually about. Not being able to see and articulate what’s wrong with other people, or the world, but being able to accept your part in that. Imagining that if there is something wrong with the way the universe operates (or freely exists, if you don’t believe in anything so grandiose and engineered as operation), that it is completely due to the way you are. Being awake is a willingness to explore that error and correct it. And by doing so, saving the world.

07 APR 2025

Leave a Comment

A Pathless Land

Published on January 11, 2005

I have not found the answers seeking truth,
nor even formed the questions halfway right;
the mysteries that tempted me in youth
are still in shrouded mists hidden from sight.

The path under my feet begins and ends
a single step from where my legs touch ground;
and sacred destinations? Well, my friends,
not more than a few moments rest I’ve found.

And yet, I would not trade the journey made
for any great reward from gods, or king.
I have become a very different man
than had I come here leading some parade.

It seems that fumbling, half-sure wandering brings
experience beyond all dreams and plans.

11 JAN 2005

Leave a Comment

My life as a Moody Blues song …

Published on February 3, 2004

Several entries ago, I mentioned a book on learning to think like Leonardo da Vinci. Well, I am slowly working my way through the exercises (very slowly indeed, as I am mired somewhat at the first one), which is to come up with a list of 100 questions – the focus being on curiosity, to see what it is you are naturally curious about. The point is to write down 100 questions without stopping, coming up with the first 20 or so rather easily, but then really having to stretch to come up with the latter 80. Well, some of my questions are rather banal, and a few are indeed interesting. But that’s not the point. The point is that I noticed that while in my teens, twenties and even early thirties, a lot of my questions probably would have begun with “why”, a lot of my questions now start with “what” or “how”. Not that I have become more practical or experiential, nor do I think I have become less philosophical. In fact, I’m probably a lot more “big picture” oriented at this juncture in my life than I have ever been. But it is interesting to note how the “big” questions didn’t seem to make it on my list. As an idealist, this level of pragmatism seems odd to me — but more troubling is that coming up with 100 things I wanted to know seemed extremely difficult. It’s not so much that the depth of my curiosity has lessened, but rather than the scope of my inquiry seems to have gained a sharper, more narrow focus.

Of course, that’s the purpose of the exercise, I suppose, to identify these kinds of things. But it got me thinking — perhaps stopping the asking “why”, looking elsewhere for the justification or purpose of things (i.e., “why is the world the way it is?”) and starting to focus on the “what” and “how” (i.e., “what can I do to apply what I know” or “how does what I know relate to what I don’t know”), is the result of my spiritual wandering, my questing for “Truth” (of course, ultimately one learns that Truth, in order to be universal, must at first be discovered to be absolutely and indelibly personal). But as I reviewed my list of questions to categorize them (and do some kind of preliminary prioritization, which is the second exercise in the book), I realized that I’m not looking so much for the answers to the big questions anymore. It doesn’t really make much difference to me at this point, for example, why the world was formed, or why human beings learned to swim, or found religions. I suppose the bottom line is that I’m not so much concerned with why things are the way they are, but rather with what I can do within the framework of what is. And that reminds me of several different things: the first being that simply realizing the way things are changes them (because based on a coagulation of Martin Buber and R. D. Laing, changing your experience of something in fact changes the thing being experienced, because now you are also experiencing your experience of a thing which is now an integral part of that thing’s existence), and also that the mingling of the observer and the observed (well, not so much a mingling, but a blurring of the line between the two, which eliminates the confines of duality to some respect) changes both the experimenter and the experiment. Krishnamurti proposed that to understand the answer, it is necessary to understand the question. Kabir said the destination is part of the first step of the journey. So few things are not related in that way.

On a separate note, I guess: Knowledge is power. That’s a common phrase, much quoted and bandied about. But I recently read a quotation from Emerson (that doubtless is based on the original source to some degree) that stated it a different way: “There is no knowledge that is not power.” Not quite as diametrically opposed as “those who are not with us, are against us” versus “those who are not against us, are with us”, but a slightly different shift in perspective, nonetheless.

Leave a Comment

Five Books to Rule Them All …

Published on July 3, 2003

What five books would you reccomend that others read to best know who you are, and where coming from, and what aspirations?

Be Here Now — Ram Dass and the Lama Foundation: I’ve said many times before that this book saved my mind. It was there when my dad died, it was there when my first marriage was falling apart, it was there when I did my last hit of acid. The second half of the book, Cookbook for a Sacred Life, is a beautiful guide to getting your head together, and the recommended reading list (Sacred Loaves) is by itself worth the price of the book.

The Seven Storey Mountain — Thomas Merton: When I was waffling on whether or not to have faith in anything, I picked up this book. For some reason, I was reading Catholic auto/biographies – John of the Cross, Teresa of Avila, Ignatius Loyola, Augustine, Aquinas, and so on. Somewhere I found a reference to this book, and subsequently read it. It is a beautiful story of having no faith, discovering the part it plays in life, and finding it, regardless of your religious persuation. And it certainly doesn’t put the monastic life in a bad light, either.

Total Freedom — Jiddu Krishnamurti: Ah, Krishnamurti. The ultimate non-guru, non-teacher, non-methodologist. Any work by K. is likely to sever your tenuous hold on reality like a razor, and leave your illusions dangling. My thirst for reality, for Truth with a capital T, really initiated with reading Krishnamurti.

Tropic of Capricorn — Henry Miller: Henry Miller re-introduced me to the joy of living, through his writing, and ultimately, to the joy of writing. At the time in my life when I encountered HM, I was shiftless, drifting and directionless – and perhaps not coincidentally, also 28, the age at which HM really started writing. Witnessing his savoring of the marrow of life, the details of common, ordinary events that he expanded into joyous paeans to existence, I too began a revitalization that continues to this day.

The Tower Treasure — Franklin W. Dixon: The first in the Hardy Boys series, and the first book I ever read on my own, at age 5. By the time I was 7 or 8, I had read all 58 of the original series. There is nothing like mystery, adventure, doing the right thing and the cameraderie of brothers to sustain the ambitions of a young boy. I suppose that sums up my life now…

Leave a Comment

Krishnamurti

Published on June 27, 2003

If you would seek the truth, you must be willing
to seek beyond the questions, simple facts,
leave behind stale conceptions, and stand naked,
alone, aware of just this very moment.

Happiness is not based upon others,
it cannot be a shield against the world;
there is a thing that is, it is not other,
and holding it cannot keep it from harm.

We seek some common ground, yet it eludes us
because to seek it there, beyond our selves is vain;
there is no method, guru, or sure teaching,
for truth is found in its own pathless land.

Why suffering, and pain, and disappointment?
Why good and evil, thought of loss or gain?
Because to just exist seems too complacent,
because we like to think we must have plans.

But the universe does not give much attention
to us, in the grand scheme of every day;
We are like flowers, or the breeze, so fragile,
and here, then gone, in but a moment’s play.

The human situation? It reflects us,
each thought that seeks to raise our selves above
the simple, infinite way of creation –
energy released, gathered again.

When the observer and the observation
Cease their illusive separate planes and merge
There is no cause and no effect to ponder;
If you want to find what’s sacred, get out of the way.

27 JUN 2003

Leave a Comment

A Thought on Artists

Published on April 7, 2003

“Who is that person whom you call an artist? A man who is momentarily creative? To me he is not an artist. The man who merely at rare moments has this creative impulse and expresses that creativeness through perfection of technique, surely you would not call him an artist. To me, the true artist is one who lives completely, harmoniously, who does not divide his art from living, whose very life is that expression, whether it be a picture, Music, or his behavior; who has not divorced his expression on a canvas or in Music or in stone from his daily conduct, daily living. That demands the highest intelligence, highest harmony. To me the true artist is the man who has that harmony. He may express it on canvas, or he may talk, or he may paint; or he may not express it at all, he may feel it. But all this demands that exquisite poise, that intensity of awareness and, therefore, his expression is not divorced from the daily continuity of living.”
Jiddu Krishnamurti, Living in Ecstasy, Ojai, California, June 29, 1934

Leave a Comment

Journeys and Destinations

Published on January 12, 2003

My house says to me, “do not leave me, for here dwells your past.” And the road says to me, “Come and follow me, for I am your future.” And I say to both my house and the road, “I have no past, nor have I a future. If I stay here, there is a going in my staying; and if I go there is a staying in my going. Only love and death change all things.” —Kahlil Gibran

Each time you draw a straight line in the sand,
or as Kabir says, “when you put one foot
in front of the other”, you have defined
a course of action, a new direction

that leads to an unknown realm, a future
where there is no map; Krishnamurti said
it was a pathless land, this place where truth
waits, longing only to be discovered.

The safety of a dwelling place, its warm
familiarity, can lull to sleep
(but yet never fully anesthetize)
the wanderlust of the wild, searching soul,
that beckons us to dare beyond the stoop
and forge a fresh road into tomorrow.

12 JAN 2003

Leave a Comment